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ZOO(1) REFERENCE MANUAL ZOO(1)
NAME
zoo - manipulate archives of files in compressed form
SYNOPSIS
zoo {acfDeghHlLPTuUvVx}[aAcCdEfghImMnNoOpPqSu1:/.@n+-=]
archive [file] ...
zoo -command archive [file] ...
zoo h
DESCRIPTION
Zoo is used to create and maintain collections of files in
compressed form. It uses a Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm
that gives space savings in the range of 20% to 80% depend-
ing on the type of file data. Zoo can store and selectively
extract multiple generations of the same file. Data can be
recovered from damaged archives by skipping the damaged por-
tion and locating undamaged data with the help of fiz(1).
This documentation is for version 2.1. Changes from previ-
ous versions are described in the section labelled CHANGES.
The command zoo h gives a summary of commands. Extended
multiscreen help can be obtained with zoo H.
Zoo will not add an archive to itself, nor add the archive's
backup (with .bak extension to the filename) to the archive.
Zoo has two types of commands: Expert commands, which con-
sist of one command letter followed by zero or more modifier
characters, and Novice commands, which consist of a hyphen
(`-') followed by a command word that may be abbreviated.
Expert commands are case-sensitive but Novice commands are
not.
When zoo adds a file to an existing archive, the default
action is to maintain one generation of each file in an
archive and to mark any older generation as deleted. A
limit on the number of generations to save can be specified
by the user for an entire archive, or for each file indivi-
dually, or both. Zoo deletes a stored copy of an added file
if necessary to prevent the number of stored generations
from exceeding the user-specified limit.
Deleted files may be later undeleted. Archives may be
packed to recover space occupied by deleted files.
All commands assume that the archive name ends with the
characters .zoo unless a different extension is supplied.
Novice commands
Novice commands may be abbreviated to a hyphen followed by
at least one command character. Each Novice command works
in two stages. First, the command does its intended work.
Then, if the result was that one or more files were deleted
in the specified archive, the archive is packed. If packing
occurs, the original unpacked archive is always left behind
with an extension of .bak.
No Novice command ever stores the directory prefix of a
file.
The Novice commands are as follows.
-add Adds the specified files to the archive.
-freshen
Adds a specified file to the archive if and only if an
older file by the same name already exists in the
archive.
-delete
Deletes the specified files from the archive.
-update
Adds a specified file to the archive either: if an
older file by the same name already exists in the
archive or: if a file by the same name does not
already exist in the archive.
-extract
Extracts the specified files from the archive. If no
file is specified all files are extracted.
-move
Equivalent to -add except that source files are deleted
after addition.
-print
Equivalent to -extract except that extracted data are
sent to standard output.
-list
Gives information about the specified archived files
including any attached comments. If no files are
specified all files are listed. Deleted files are not
listed.
-test
Equivalent to -extract except that the extracted data
are not saved but any errors encountered are reported.
-comment
Allows the user to add or update comments attached to
archived files. When prompted, the user may: type a
carriage return to skip the file, leaving any current
comment unchanged; or type a (possibly null) comment
of up to 32,767 characters terminated by /end (case-
insensitive) on a separate line; or type the end-of-
file character (normally control D) to skip all remain-
ing files.
-delete
Deletes the specified files.
The correspondence between Novice and Expert commands is as follows.
Novice Equivalent
Command Description Expert Command
____________________________________________________________
-add add files to archive aP:
-extract extract files from archive x
-move move files to archive aMP:
-test test archive integrity xNd
-print extract files to standard output xp
-delete delete files from archive DP
-list list archive contents VC
-update add new or newer files aunP:
-freshen by add newer files auP:
-comment add comments to files c
Expert commands
The general format of expert commands is:
zoo {acfDeghHlLPTuUvVx}[aAcCdEfghImMnNoOpPqSu1:/.@n+-=]
archive [file] ...
The characters enclosed within {} are commands. Choose any
one of these. The characters enclosed within [] just to the
right of the {} are modifiers and zero or more of these may
immediately follow the command character. All combinations
of command and modifier characters may not be valid.
Files are added to an archive with the command:
zoo {au}[cfhIMnPqu:+-] archive [file] ...
Command characters are:
a Add each specified file to archive. Any already-
archived copy of the file is deleted if this is neces-
sary to avoid exceeding the user-specified limit on the
number of generations of the file to maintain in the
archive.
u Do an update of the archive. A specified file is added
to the archive only if a copy of it is already in the
archive and the copy being added is newer than the copy
already in the archive.
The following modifiers are specific to these commands.
M Move files to archive. This makes zoo delete (unlink)
the original files after they have been added to the
archive. Files are deleted after addition of all files
to the archive is complete and after any requested
packing of the archive has been done, and only if zoo
detected no errors.
n Add new files only. A specified file is added only if
it isn't already in the archive.
h Use the high performance compression algorithm. This
option may be used with either the add (a) or filter
(f) commands to gain extra compression at the expense
of using somewhat more processor time. Extracting files
compressed with the method is usually slightly faster
than those saved with the default method.
P Pack archive after files have been added.
u Applied to the a command, this modifier makes it behave
identically to the u command.
The combination of the n modifier with the u modifier
or u command causes addition of a file to the archive
either if the file is not already in the archive, or if
the file is already in the archive but the archived
copy is older than the copy being added.
: Do not store directory names. In the absence of this
modifier zoo stores the full pathname of each archived
file.
I Read filenames to be archived from standard input. Zoo
will read its standard input and assume that each line
of text contains a filename. Under AmigaDOS and the
**IX family, the entire line is used. Under MS-DOS and
VAX/VMS, zoo assumes that the filename is terminated by
a blank, tab, or newline; thus it is permissible for
the line of text to contain more than one field
separated by white space, and only the first field will
be used.
Under the **IX family of operating systems, zoo can be
used as follows in a pipeline:
find . -print | zoo aI sources
If the I modifier is specified, no filenames may be
supplied on the command line itself.
+,- These modifiers take effect only if the a command
results in the creation of a new archive. + causes any
newly-created archive to have generations enabled. -
is provided for symmetry and causes any newly-created
archive to have generations disabled; this is also the
default if neither + nor - is specified.
Files are extracted from an archive with the command:
zoo {ex}[dNoOpqS./@] archive [file] ...
The e and x commands are synonymous. If no file was speci-
fied, all files are extracted from the archive.
The following modifiers are specific to the e and x com-
mands:
N Do not save extracted data but report any errors
encountered.
O Overwrite files. Normally, if a file being extracted
would overwrite an already-existing file of the same
name, zoo asks you if you really want to overwrite it.
You may answer the question with `y', which means yes,
overwrite; or `n', which means no, don't overwrite; or
`a', which means assume the answer is `y' for this and
all subsequent files. The O modifier makes zoo assume
that files may always be overwritten. Neither answer-
ing the question affirmatively nor using O alone will
cause read-only files to be overwritten.
On **IX systems, however, doubling this modifier as OO
will force zoo to unconditionally overwrite any read-
protected files with extracted files if it can do so.
The O, N, and p modifiers are mutually exclusive.
S Supersede newer files on disk with older extracted
files. Unless this modifier is used, zoo will not
overwrite a newer existing file with an older extracted
file.
o This is equivalent to the O modifier if and only if it
is given at least twice. It is otherwise ignored.
p Pipe extracted data to standard output. Error messages
are piped to standard output as well. However, if a
bad CRC is detected, an error message is sent both to
standard error and to standard output.
/ Extract to original pathname. Any needed directories
must already exist. In the absence of this modifier
all files are extracted into the current directory. If
this modifier is doubled as //, required directories
need not exist and are created if necessary.
The management of multiple generations of archived files is
done with the commands:
zoo gl[Aq]{+-=}number archive files ..
zoo gc[q]{+-=}number archive files ..
zoo gA[q]- archive
zoo gA[q]+ archive
The first form, gl, adjusts the generation limit of selected
files by the specified value. If the form =n is used, where
n is a decimal number, this sets the generation limit to the
specified value. If + or - are used in placed of = the
effect is to increment or decrement the generation limit by
the specified value. For example, the command
zoo gl=5 xyz :
sets the generation limit of each file in the archive
xyz.zoo to a value of 5. The command
zoo gl-3 xyz :
decrements the generation limit of each file in the archive
to 3 less than it currently is.
If the A modifier is used, the archive-wide generation limit
is adjusted instead.
The number of generations of a file maintained in an archive
is limited by the file generation limit, or the archive gen-
eration limit, whichever is lower. As a special case, a
generation limit of 0 stands for no limit. Thus the default
file generation limit of 0 and archive generation limit of 3
limits the number of generations of each file in a newly-
created archive to three.
The generation limit specified should be in the range 0
through 15; any higher numbers are interpreted modulo 16.
The second form of the command, using gc, adjusts the gen-
eration count of selected files. Each file has a generation
count of 1 when it is first added to an archive. Each time
a file by the same name is added again to an archive, it
receives a generation count that is one higher than the
highest generation count of the archived copy of the file.
The permissible range of generation counts is 1 through
65535. If repeated manipulations of an archive result in
files having very high generation counts, they may be set
back to lower numbers with the gc command. The syntax of
the command is analogous to the syntax of the gl command,
except that the A modifier is not applicable to the gc com-
mand.
The third form, gA-, disables generations in an archive.
Generations are off when an archive is first created, but
may be enabled with the fourth form of the command, gA+.
When generations are disabled in an archive, zoo will not
display generation numbers in archive listings or maintain
multiple generations. Generations can be re-enabled at any
time, though manipulation of an archive with repeated inter-
spersed gA- and gA+ commands may result in an archive whose
behavior is not easily understandable.
Archived files are listed with the command:
zoo {lLvV}[aAcCdfgmqvV@/1+-] archive[.zoo] [file] ...
l Information presented includes the date and time of
each file, its original and current (compressed) sizes,
and the percentage size decrease due to compression
(labelled CF or compression factor). If a file was
added to the archive in a different timezone, the
difference between timezones is shown in hours as a
signed number. As an example, if the difference is
listed as +3, this means that the file was added to the
archive in a timezone that is 3 hours west of the
current timezone. The file time listed is, however,
always the original timestamp of the archived file, as
observed by the user who archived the file, expressed
as that user's local time. (Timezone information is
stored and displayed only if the underlying operating
system knows about timezones.)
If no filename is supplied all files are listed except
deleted files.
Zoo selects which generation(s) of a file to list
according to the following algorithm.
If no filename is supplied, only the latest generation
of each file is listed. If any filenames are
specified, and a generation is specified for an argu-
ment, only the requested generation is listed. If a
filename is specified ending with the generation char-
acter (`:' or `;'), all generations of that file are
listed. Thus a filename argument of the form zoo.c
will cause only the latest generation of zoo.c to be
listed; an argument of the form zoo.c:4 will cause
generation 4 of zoo.c to be listed; and an argument of
the form zoo.c: or zoo.c:* will cause all generations
of zoo.c to be listed.
L This is similar to the l command except that all sup-
plied arguments must be archives and all non-deleted
generations of all files in each archive appear in the
listing.
On **IX systems, on which the shell expands arguments,
if multiple archives are to be listed, the L command
must be used. On other systems (VAX/VMS, AmigaDOS,
MSDOS) on which wildcard expansion is done internally
by zoo, wildcards may be used in the archive name, and
a multiple archive listing obtained, using the l com-
mand.
v This causes any comment attached to the archive to be
listed in addition to the other information.
V This causes any comment attached to the archive and
also any comment attached to each file to be listed.
Both the V and v command characters can also be used as
modifiers to the l and L commands.
In addition to the general modifiers described later, the
following modifiers can be applied to the archive list com-
mands.
a This gives a single-line format containing both each
filename and the name of the archive, sorted by archive
name. It is especially useful with the L command,
since the result can be further sorted on any field to
give a master listing of the entire contents of a set
of archives.
A This causes any comment attached to the archive to be
listed.
g This modifier causes file generation information to be
listed about the archive. For each file listed, the
user-specified generation limit, if any, is listed.
For example, `3g' for a file means that the user wants
no more than three generations of the file to be kept.
In archives created by older versions of zoo, the list-
ing will show `-g', meaning that no generation informa-
tion is kept and multiple generations of the file are
not being maintained.
In addition to the generation information for each
file, the archive-wide generation limit, if any, is
shown at the end of the listing. If generations have
been disabled by the user, this is so indicated, for
example:
Archive generation limit is 3 (generations off).
For more information about generations see the descrip-
tion of the g command.
m This modifier is currently applicable to **IX systems
only. It causes the mode bits (file protection code)
of each file to be listed as a three-digit octal
number. Currently zoo preserves only the lowest nine
mode bits. Their meanings are as described in the **IX
documentation for the chmod(1) command.
C This modifier causes the stored cyclic redundancy code
(CRC) for each archived file to be shown as a four-
digit hexadecimal number.
1 This forces one filename to be listed per line. It is
most useful in combination with the f modifier.
/ This forces any directory name to be always listed,
even in fast columnized listings that do not normally
include any directory names.
+,- The - modifier causes trailing generation numbers to be
omitted from filenames. The + modifier causes the
trailing generation numbers to be shown, which is also
the default if neither - nor + is specified.
Files may be deleted and undeleted from an archive with the
following commands:
zoo {DU}[Pq1] archive file ...
The D command deletes the specified files and the U command
undeletes the specified files. The 1 modifier (the digit
one, not the letter ell) forces deletion or undeletion of at
most one file. If multiple instances of the same file exist
in an archive, use of the 1 modifier may allow selective
extraction of one of these.
Comments may be added to an archive with the command:
zoo c[A] archive
Without the modifier A, this behaves identically to the
-comment command. With the modifier A, the command serves
to add or update the comment attached to the archive as a
whole. This comment may be listed with the lA, LA, v, and V
commands. Applying the cA command to an archive that was
created with an older version of zoo will result in an error
message requesting that the user first pack the archive with
the P command. This reorganizes the archive and creates
space for the archive comment.
The timestamp of an archive may be adjusted with the com-
mand:
zoo T[q] archive
Zoo normally attempts to maintain the timestamp of an
archive to reflect the age of the newest file stored in it.
Should the timestamp ever be incorrect it can be fixed with
the T command.
An archive may be packed with the command:
zoo P[EPq] archive
If the backup copy of the archive already exists, zoo will
refuse to pack the archive unless the P modifier is also
given. The E modifier causes zoo not to save a backup copy
of the original archive after packing. A unique temporary
file in the current directory is used to initially hold the
packed archive. This file will be left behind if packing is
interrupted or if for some reason this file cannot be
renamed to the name of the original archive when packing is
complete.
Packing removes any garbage data appended to an archive
because of Xmodem file transfer and also recovers any wasted
space remaining in an archive that has been frequently
updated or in which comments were replaced. Packing also
updates the format of any archive that was created by an
older version of zoo so that newer features (e.g. archive-
wide generation limit, archive comment) become fully avail-
able.
Zoo can act as a pure compression or uncompression filter,
reading from standard input and writing to standard output.
This is achieved with the command:
zoo f{cu}[h
where c specifies compression, u specifies uncompression,
and h used in addition requests the high-performance
compression be used. A CRC value is used to check the
integrity of the data. The compressed data stream has no
internal archive structure and contains multiple files only
if the input data stream was already structured, as might be
obtained, for example, from tar or cpio.
Modem transfers can be speeded up with these commands:
zoo fc < file | sz ... rz | zoo fu > file
General modifiers
The following modifiers are applicable to several commands:
c Applied to the a and u commands, this causes the user
to be prompted for a comment for each file added to the
archive. If the file being added has replaced, or is a
newer generation of, a file already in the archive, any
comment attached to that file is shown to the user and
becomes attached to the newly-added file unless the
user changes it. Possible user responses are as
described for the -comment command. Applied to the
archive list command l, the c modifier causes the list-
ing of any comments attached to archived files.
. In conjunction with / or // this modifier causes any
extracted pathname beginning with `/' to be interpreted
relative to the current directory, resulting in the
possible creation of a subtree rooted at the current
directory. In conjunction with the command P the .
modifier causes the packed archive to be created in the
current directory. This is intended to allow users
with limited disk space but multiple disk drives to
pack large archives.
d Most commands that act on an archive act only on files
that are not deleted. The d modifier makes commands
act on both normal and deleted files. If doubled as
dd, this modifier forces selection only of deleted
files.
f Applied to the a and u commands, the f modifier causes
fast archiving by adding files without compression.
Applied to l it causes a fast listing of files in a
multicolumn format.
q Be quiet. Normally zoo lists the name of each file and
what action it is performing. The q modifier
suppresses this. When files are being extracted to
standard output, the q modifier suppresses the header
preceding each file. When archive contents are being
listed, this modifier suppresses any header and
trailer. When a fast columnized listing is being
obtained, this modifier causes all output to be com-
bined into a single set of filenames for all archives
being listed.
When doubled as qq, this modifier suppresses WARNING
messages, and when tripled as qqq, ERROR messages are
suppressed too. FATAL error messages are never
suppressed.
Recovering data from damaged archives
The @ modifier allows the user to specify the exact position
in an archive where zoo should extract a file from, allowing
damaged portions of an archive to be skipped. This modifier
must be immediately followed by a decimal integer without
intervening spaces, and possibly by a comma and another
decimal integer, giving a command of the form l@m or l@m,n
(to list archive contents) or x@m or x@m,n (to extract files
from an archive). Listing or extraction begin at position m
in the archive. The value of m must be the position within
the archive of an undamaged directory entry. This position
is usually obtained from fiz(1) version 2.0 or later.
If damage to the archive has shortened or lengthened it, all
positions within the archive may be changed by some constant
amount. To compensate for this, the value of n may be
specified. This value is also usually obtained from fiz(1).
It should be the position in the archive of the file data
corresponding to the directory entry that has been specified
with m. Thus if the command x@456,575 is given, it will
cause the first 456 bytes of the archive to be skipped and
extraction to begin at offset 456; in addition, zoo will
attempt to extract the file data from position 575 in the
archive instead of the value that is found in the directory
entry read from the archive. For example, here is some of
the output of fiz when it acts on a damaged zoo archive:
****************
2526: DIR [changes] ==> 95
2587: DATA
****************
3909: DIR [copyrite] ==> 1478
3970: DATA
4769: DATA
****************
In such output, DIR indicates where fiz found a directory
entry in the archive, and DATA indicates where fiz found
file data in the archive. Filenames located by fiz are
enclosed in square brackets, and the notation "==> 95"
indicates that the directory entry found by fiz at position
2526 has a file data pointer to position 95. (This is
clearly wrong, since file data always occur in an archive
after their directory entry.) In actuality, fiz found file
data at positions 2587, 3970, and 4769. Since fiz found
only two directory entries, and each directory entry
corresponds to one file, one of the file data positions is
an artifact.
In this case, commands to try giving to zoo might be
x@2526,2587 (extract beginning at position 2526, and get
file data from position 2587), x@3090,3970 (extract at 3090,
get data from 3970) and x@3909,4769 (extract at 3909, get
data from 4769). Once a correctly-matched directory
entry/file data pair is found, zoo will in most cases syn-
chronize with and correctly extract all files subsequently
found in the archive. Trial and error should allow all
undamaged files to be extracted. Also note that self-
extracting archives created using sez (the Self-Extracting
Zoo utility for MS-DOS), which are normally executed on an
MS-DOS system for extraction, can be extracted on non-MSDOS
systems using zoo's damaged-archive recovery method using
the @ modifier.
Wildcard handling
Under the **IX family of operating systems, the shell nor-
mally expands wildcards to a list of matching files. Wild-
cards that are meant to match files within an archive must
therefore be escaped or quoted. When selecting files to be
added to an archive, wildcard conventions are as defined for
the shell. When selecting files from within an archive,
wildcard handling is done by zoo as described below.
Under MS-DOS and AmigaDOS, quoting of wildcards is not
needed. All wildcard expansion of filenames is done by zoo,
and wildcards inside directory names are expanded only when
listing or extracting files but not when adding them.
The wildcard syntax interpreted by zoo is limited to the
following characters.
* Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
? Matches any single character.
Arbitrary combinations of * and ? are allowed.
/ If a supplied pattern contains a slash anywhere in it,
then the slash separating any directory prefix from the
filename must be matched explicitly. If a supplied
pattern contains no slashes, the match is selective
only on the filename.
c-c Two characters separated by a hyphen specify a charac-
ter range. All filenames beginning with those charac-
ters will match. The character range is meaningful
only by itself or preceded by a directory name. It is
not specially interpreted if it is part of a filename.
: and ;
These characters are used to separate a filename from a
generation number and are used when selecting specific
generations of archived files. If no generation char-
acter is used, the filename specified matches only the
latest generation of the file. If the generation char-
acter is specified, the filename and the generation are
matched independently by zoo's wildcard mechanism. If
no generation is specified following the : or ; charac-
ter, all generations of that file will match. As a
special case, a generation number of 0 matches only the
latest generation of a file, while ^0 matches all gen-
erations of a file except the latest one. If no
filename is specified preceding the generation charac-
ter, all filenames will match. As a corollary, the
generation character by itself matches all generations
of all files.
MS-DOS users should note that zoo does not treat the dot as
a special character, and it does not ignore characters fol-
lowing an asterisk. Thus * matches all filenames; *.*
matches filenames containing a dot; *_* matches filenames
containing an underscore; and *z matches all filenames that
end with the character z, whether or not they contain a dot.
Usage hints
The Novice command set in zoo is meant to provide an inter-
face with functionality and format that will be familiar to
users of other similar archive utilities. In keeping with
this objective, the Novice commands do not maintain or use
any subdirectory information or allow the use of zoo's abil-
ity to maintain multiple generations of files. For this
reason, users should switch to exclusively using the Expert
commands as soon as possible.
Although the Expert command set is quite large, it should be
noted that in almost every case, all legal modifiers for a
command are fully orthogonal. This means that the user can
select any combination of modifiers, and when they act
together, they will have the intuitively obvious effect.
Thus the user need only memorize what each modifier does,
and then can combine them as needed without much further
thought.
For example, consider the a command which is used to add
files to an archive. By itself, it simply adds the speci-
fied files. To cause only already-archived files to be
updated if their disk copies have been modified, it is only
necessary to add the u modifier, making the command au. To
cause only new files (i.e., files not already in the
archive) to be added, the n modifier is used to create the
command an. To cause both already-archived files to be
updated and new files to be added, the u and n modifiers can
be used together, giving the command aun. Since the order
of modifiers is not significant, the command could also be
anu.
Further, the c modifier can be used to cause zoo to prompt
the user for a comment to attach to each file added. And
the f modifier can cause fast addition (addition without
compression). It should be obvious then that the command
auncf will cause zoo to update already-archived files, add
new files, prompt the user for comments, and do the addition
of files without any compression. Furthermore, if the user
wishes to move files to the archive, i.e., delete the disk
copy of each file after it is added to the archive, it is
only necessary to add the M modifier to the command, so it
becomes auncfM. And if the user also wishes to cause the
archive to be packed as part of the command, thus recovering
space from any files that are replaced, the command can be
modified to auncfMP by adding the P modifier that causes
packing.
Similarly, the archive listing commands can be built up by
combining modifiers. The basic command to list the contents
of an archive is l. If the user wants a fast columnized
listing, the f modifier can be added to give the lf command.
Since this listing will have a header giving the archive
name and a trailer summarizing interesting information about
the archive, such as the number of deleted files, the user
may wish to "quieten" the listing by suppressing these; the
relevant modifier is q, which when added to the command
gives lfq. If the user wishes to see the **IX mode (file
protection) bits, and also information about multiple gen-
erations, the modifiers m (show mode bits) and g (show gen-
eration information) can be added, giving the command lfqmg.
If the user also wishes to see an attached archive comment,
the modifier A (for archive) will serve. Thus the command
lfqmgA will give a fast columnized listing of the archive,
suppressing any header and trailer, showing mode bits and
generation information, and showing any comment attached to
the archive as a whole. If in addition individual comments
attached to files are also needed, simply append the c
modifier to the command, making it lfqmgAc. The above com-
mand will not show any deleted files, however; to see them,
use the d modifier, making the command lfqmgAcd (or double
it as in lfqmgAcdd if only the deleted files are to be
listed). And if the user also wishes to see the CRC value
for each file being listed, the modifier C will do this, as
in the command lfqmgAcdC, which gives a fast columnized
listing of all files, including deleted files, showing any
archive comment and file comments, and file protection codes
and generation information, as well as the CRC value of each
file.
Note that the above command lfqmgAcdC could also be abbrevi-
ated to VfqmgdC because the command V is shorthand for lcA
(archive listing with all comments shown). Similarly the
command v is shorthand for lA (archive listing with archive
comment shown). Both V and v can be used as modifiers to
any of the other archive listing commands.
Generations
By default, zoo assumes that only the latest generation of a
specified file is needed. If generations other than the
latest one need to be selected, this may be done by specify-
ing them in the filename. For example, the name stdio.h
would normally refer to the latest generation of the file
stdio.h stored in a zoo archive. To get an archive listing
showing all generations of stdio.h in the archive, the
specification stdio.h:* could be used (enclosed in single
quotes if necessary to protect the wildcard character * from
the shell). Also, stdio.h:0 selects only the latest genera-
tion of stdio.h, while stdio.h:^0 selects all generations
except the latest one. The : character here separates the
filename from the generation number, and the character * is
a wildcard that matches all possible generations. For con-
venience, the generation itself may be left out, so that the
name stdio.h: (with the : but without a generation number or
a wildcard) matches all generations exactly as stdio.h:*
does.
If a generation is specified but no filename is present, as
in :5, :*, or just :, all filenames of the specified genera-
tion will be selected. Thus :5 selects generation 5 of each
file, and :* and : select all generations of all files.
It is important to note that zoo's idea of the latest gen-
eration of a file is not based upon searching the entire
archive. Instead, whenever zoo adds a file to an archive,
it is marked as being the latest generation. Thus, if the
latest generation of a file is deleted, then no generation
of that file is considered the latest any more. This can be
surprising to the user. For example, if an archive already
contains the file stdio.h:5 and a new copy is added, appear-
ing in the archive listing as stdio.h:6, and then stdio.h:6
is deleted, the remaining copy stdio.h:5 will no longer be
considered to be the latest generation, and the file
stdio.h:5, even if undeleted, will no longer appear in an
archive listing unless generation 5 (or every generation) is
specifically requested. This behavior will likely be
improved in future releases of zoo.
FILES
xXXXXXX - temporary file used during packing
archive_name.bak - backup of archive
SEE ALSO
compress(1), fiz(1)
BUGS
When files are being added to an archive on a non-MS-DOS
system, it is possible for zoo to fail to detect a full disk
and hence create an invalid archive. This bug will be fixed
in a future release.
Files with generation counts that wrap around from 65535 to
1 are not currently handled correctly. If a file's genera-
tion count reaches a value close to 65535, it should be
manually set back down to a low number. This may be easily
done with a command such as gc-65000, which subtracts 65000
from the generation count of each specified file. This
problem will be fixed in a future release.
Although zoo on **IX systems preserves the lowest nine mode
bits of regular files, it does not currently do the same for
directories.
Currently zoo's handling of the characters : and ; in
filenames is not robust, because it interprets these to
separate a filename from a generation number. A quoting
mechanism will eventually be implemented.
Standard input cannot be archived nor can a created archive
be sent to standard output. Spurious error messages may
appear if the filename of an archive is too long.
Since zoo never archives any file with the same name as the
archive or its backup (regardless of any path prefixes),
care should be taken to make sure that a file to be archived
does not coincidentally have the same name as the archive it
is being added to. It usually suffices to make sure that no
file being archived is itself a zoo archive. (Previous ver-
sions of zoo sometimes tried to add an archive to itself.
This bug now seems to be fixed.)
Only regular files are archived; devices and empty direc-
tories are not. Support for archiving empty directories and
for preserving directory attributes is planned for the near
future.
Early versions of MS-DOS have a bug that prevents "." from
referring to the root directory; this leads to anomalous
results if the extraction of paths beginning with a dot is
attempted.
VAX/VMS destroys case information unless arguments are
enclosed in double quotes. For this reason if a command
given to zoo on a VAX/VMS system includes any uppercase
characters, it must be enclosed in double quotes. Under
VAX/VMS, zoo does not currently restore file timestamps;
this will be fixed as soon as I figure out RMS extended
attribute blocks, or DEC supplies a utime() function, which-
ever occurs first. Other VMS bugs, related to file struc-
tures, can often be overcome by using the program bilf.c
that is supplied with zoo.
It is not currently possible to create a zoo archive con-
taining all zoo archives that do not contain themselves.
DIAGNOSTICS
Error messages are intended to be self-explanatory and are
divided into three categories. WARNINGS are intended to
inform the user of an unusual situation, such as a CRC error
during extraction, or -freshening of an archive containing a
file newer than one specified on the command line. ERRORS
are fatal to one file, but execution continues with the next
file if any. FATAL errors cause execution to be aborted.
The occurrence of any of these causes an exit status of 1.
Normal termination without any errors gives an exit status
of 0. (Under VAX/VMS, however, to avoid an annoying mes-
sage, zoo always exits with an error code of 1.)
COMPATIBILITY
All versions of zoo on all systems are required to create
archives that can be extracted and listed with all versions
of zoo on all systems, regardless of filename and directory
syntax or archive structure; furthermore, any version of
zoo must be able to fully manipulate all archives created by
all lower-numbered versions of zoo on all systems. So far
as I can tell, this upward compatibility (all manipulations)
and downward compatiblity (ability to extract and list) is
maintained by zoo versions up to 2.01. Version 2.1 adds the
incompatibility that if high-performance compression is
used, earlier versions cannot extract files compressed with
version 2.1. This is the only incompatibility that is
permissible. You are forbidden, with the force of copyright
law, to create from the zoo source code any derivative work
that violates this compatibility goal, whether knowingly or
through negligence. If any violation of this compatibility
goal is observed, this should be considered a serious prob-
lem and reported to me.
CHANGES
Here is a list of changes occurring from version 1.50 to
version 2.01. In parentheses is given the version in which
each change occurred.
- (1.71) New modifiers to the list commands permit
optional suppression of header and trailer information,
inclusion of directory names in columnized listings,
and fast one-column listings.
- (1.71) Timezones are handled.
- (1.71) A bug was fixed that had made it impossible to
individually update comments for a file whose name did
not correspond to MS-DOS format.
- (1.71) A change was made that now permits use of the
shared library on the **IX PC.
- (1.71) VAX/VMS is now supported reasonably well.
- (2.00) A comment may now be attached to the archive
itself.
- (2.00) The OO option allows forced overwriting of
read-only files.
- (2.00) Zoo will no longer extract a file if a newer
copy already exists on disk; the S option will over-
ride this.
- (2.00) File attributes are preserved for **IX systems.
- (2.00) Multiple generations of the same file are sup-
ported.
- (2.00) Zoo will now act as a compression or decompres-
sion filter on a stream of data and will use a CRC
value to check the integrity of a data stream that is
uncompressed.
- (2.00) A bug was fixed that caused removal of a direc-
tory link if files were moved to an archive by the
superuser on a **IX system.
- (2.00) The data recovery modifier @ was greatly
enhanced. Self-extracting archives created for MS-DOS
systems can now be extracted by zoo on any system with
help from fiz(1).
- (2.01) A bug was fixed that had caused the first gen-
eration of a file to sometimes unexpectedly show up in
archive listings.
- (2.01) A bug was fixed that had caused the MS-DOS ver-
sion to silently skip files that could not be extracted
because of insufficient disk space.
- (2.01) A bug was fixed that had sometimes made it
impossible to selectively extract a file by specifying
its name, even though all files could be extracted from
the archive by not specifying any filenames. This
occurred when a file had been archived on a longer-
filename system (e.g. AmigaDOS) and extraction was
attempted on a shorter-filename system (e.g. MS-DOS).
- (2.01) A change was made that will make zoo preserve
the mode (file protection) of a zoo archive when it is
packed. This is effective only if zoo is compiled to
preserve and restore file attributes. Currently this
is so only for **IX systems.
- (2.01) A bug was fixed that had caused an update of an
archive to not always add all newer files.
- (2.01) Blanks around equal signs in commands given to
"make" were removed from the mk* scripts for better
compatiblity with more **IX implementations including
Sun's.
- (2.1) Compression is now greatly improved if the "h"
option is used.
- (2.1) The default behavior is to preserve full path-
names during extraction.
- (2.1) On some systems, extraction of files using the
older (default) compression method is greatly speeded
up.
- (2.1) Extended multiscreen help is available.
- (2.1) Memory allocation is improved, so that the MS-DOS
version will not prematurely abort when updating a
large archive.
- (2.1) The VAX/VMS version preserves file timestamps
during extraction.
- (2.1) The default archive-wide generation limit, when
generations are enabled, is 3.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
A revised version of zoo is in the works that will be able
to write newly-created archives to standard output and will
support multivolume archives. It will be upward and down-
ward compatible with this version of zoo.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The zoo archiver was initially developed using Microsoft C
3.0 on a PC clone manufactured by Toshiba of Japan and
almost sold by Xerox. Availability of the following systems
was helpful in achieving portability: Paul Homchick's Compaq
running Microport System V/AT; The Eskimo BBS somewhere in
Oregon running Xenix/68000; Greg Laskin's system 'gryphon'
which is an Intel 310 running Xenix/286; Ball State
University's AT&T 3B2/300, UNIX PC, and VAX-11/785 (4.3BSD
and VAX/VMS) systems. In addition J. Brian Waters provided
feedback to help me make the code compilable on his Amiga
using Manx/Aztec C. The executable version 2.0 for MS-DOS
is currently compiled with Borland's Turbo C++ 1.0.
Thanks are due to the following people and many others too
numerous to mention.
J. Brian Waters <jbwaters@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>, who has worked
diligently to port zoo to AmigaDOS, created Amiga-specific
code, and continues keeping it updated.
Paul Homchick <rutgers!cgh!paul>, who provided numerous
detailed reports about some nasty bugs.
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com>, who provided
numerous improvements to this manual, contributed mul-
tiscreen help, and provided many useful bug reports, bug
fixes, code improvements, and suggestions.
Mark Alexander <amdahl!drivax!alexande>, who provided me
with some bug fixes.
Haruhiko Okumura, who wrote the ar archiver and some excel-
lent compression code, which I adapted for use in zoo.
Randal L. Barnes <rlb@skyler.mavd.honeywell.com>, who (with
Randy Magnuson) wrote the code to support the preservation
of file timestamps under VAX/VMS.
Raymond D. Gardner, who contributed replacement uncompres-
sion code that on some systems is twice as fast as the
original.
Greg Yachuk and Andre Van Dalen, who independently modified
MS-DOS zoo to support multivolume archives. (This support
is not yet in this official release.)
AUTHOR
Rahul Dhesi
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